


Scopes, Barrels, Heat Sinks: A Collection of Thena Shepard Drabbles

by w0rdinista (Niamh_St_George)



Series: Thena Shepard [8]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niamh_St_George/pseuds/w0rdinista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles, ficlets, and prompt-fics set during Thena Shepard's timeline.  (May or may not feature Shepard directly.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prompt-fic: Nose-Kiss

“Shepard?”

Thena pulls back, a lazy grin at her lips.  Hell, her grin isn’t the only thing that’s lazy—she’s content and relaxed and it’s the first time in she can’t remember how long since she’s had nothing on her mind but the comfort of the couch (or, more accurately, the comfort of the couch insofar as it relates to Garrus; her own concerns have more to do with the comfort of Garrus’ lap, which is more than perfectly acceptable, so far as laps go), the quality of the vid playing, and whether or not there’s enough food in the fridge to last until shore leave’s over.  There’s work to be done, and she knows it, knows this fight’s a long way from being over, but she also knows—or at least is starting to _see_ —just how close to the edge she’d been pushing herself.  She’s been close before; hell, she’s been “close” more times than she really likes to count, but it’s taken this time off for her to realize just what a white-knuckled grip she’d had on everything.  Metaphorically speaking.

“Hmm?”

There’s a breath of laughter around the edges of his words, but his browplates are furrowed in what could very well be confusion.  Or concern.  But the likeliest candidate is confusion. “Your aim off or something?”

Her grin doesn’t budge, but her hands do—they’re wandering from his shoulders up along his cowl, then alongside his neck and under his crest.  His eyelids flutter right before he gives a hard blink and Thena can’t help but admire his ability to focus despite… distractions.

“Not last time I checked,” she answers, running her thumb along one of his mandibles.  “Why?”

“That was my nose.”

“So?”

“You kissed my _nose,_ Shepard.”  He blinks at her again as if she’s a particularly tricky firing algorithm.  “Why?”

“Didn’t cover that in your research, did you?”

The look he gives her is a sharp one, one part ‘ _Is she kidding me?’_ and two parts _‘And what if she’s not?’_ and then he narrows his eyes at her, blue eyes boring into hers as he leans his head back, cocking it thoughtfully, gauging her.  “Humans kiss… noses.”

“It’s a sign of affection.”

_“Noses.”_

Thena does it again, less the quick peck she’d dropped against his nose-plate before, and now a gentle feathering of her lips over the spot.  “Noses.”  She stretches up then, brushing a kiss over one browplate and then the other before dipping her head and pressing a kiss against his mouth.  “Mouths.”  She leans further and kisses the side of his neck, smirking into the curve of muscle when Garrus clears his throat suddenly.

“Yeah.  We’ve covered that spot already.  Multiple times.”

“You know me, always looking to improve.  Expand my repertoire.”  

She shifts on his lap so she’s straddling him and they’re pressed chest to chest and suddenly how much food’s in the fridge and just what the hell vid is playing behind her get moved to the back-burner. Garrus’ hands start out on her thighs, then slide upward over her hips to rest at her waist.

“Probably not the worst idea.  Expanding the, ah, repertoire.”  His subharmonics are positively _thrumming_ now, and she’s heard that pitch before—it’s chased goosebumps across her skin more times than she can count.

“You got some…” Thena swallows hard, “ideas you want to explore, Vakarian?”

“I might.”

She really wasn’t enjoying that vid anyway.  “All in the name of research?”

Garrus slides his hands under her backside and stands, mandibles flashing in a grin when she yelps and wraps her legs tightly around him.  “All in the name of research, Shepard.”


	2. Prompt-fic: Petrichor

**_Petrichor_ ** _: The smell of rain on dry ground._

#

“I miss weather,” Shepard announced, apropos of… well. Almost entirely nothing.  The vid they were watching, some high-budget action-adventure thing supposedly “based on” the supposedly true story of stranded asari commandoes on a hostile planet, which probably in actuality meant distantly-true and mostly-fictionalized and about a million other hyphenated qualifiers.  Garrus couldn’t decide if it was better or worse than _Fleet and Flotilla_ , which Shepard was currently developing something of a fascination with—something she made him swear on pain of dismantled scope mods he would not tell Tali.

Of course he promised.  Death was nothing to a properly assembled mod.

Garrus shot her a sidelong glance.  “What’s that now?”

“Weather,” she repeated, gesturing at the screen where the commandoes were at that moment gathering materials to build a rudimentary shelter in a torrential downpour, because… that made sense.  Garrus thought it was more likely the vid director thought asari in soaked base layers—the armor had been jettisoned without a thought after the crash, and did _anyone_ do any research before filming these things?  Shepard spoke again, distracting him from his rumbling annoyance.  “Rain.  Wind.  Snow.  _Seasons._   God, I miss seasons.”

“You know what I miss?” he asked. “Accuracy in filmmaking.”  Shepard’s answering groan was agreement enough.  Damn, he was sorry he missed her brush with potential stardom—not that Shepard didn’t already have notoriety and autograph seekers of her own, but because he’d’ve paid his weight in creds to hear her actually _say_ the words _big, stupid, jellyfish_ out loud.

“You’ll note I didn’t mention the astonishingly realistic dialogue.”

“No, just the rain.”

She tipped her head to the side, shooting him a grin.  “You’ve got to admit, it’s really great rain.  Best actor in the whole vid, if you ask me.  You think there’s an award for that?” she asked, grinning.  “Best Rain In A Painfully Bad Action Vid?  _God,_ nobody’s base layer should rip like that.”

“Well,” Garrus said, gesturing at the screen, “all the better to see her—”

Shepard grimaced, shaking her head.  “Yup.  Believe me, I saw.  Am still seeing.”

“Don’t you usually wear something _under_ your base layer?” he asked, cocking his head as a particularly voluptuous asari commando struggled to fasten the roof to the soaking-wet makeshift shelter in place.  “You don’t, ah… you know…”

“The word you’re looking for, Vakarian, is _bounce._   I don’t _bounce_ so much.  And yes.  I do.  And she _should._   Ouch.”

“Which is why you’re noticing the rain and not the really fantastic acting.”  He could see her point about the weather, he supposed, since thinking about the vid was a lost cause.  Didn’t get much in the way of different climates on a ship, and the Citadel was perfectly programed to provide perfectly temperate days.  “You can keep the snow.”

She snorted, head lolling to the side.  The pale light of the vid flickered across her face, lightening her eyes to an icy blue.  No, Garrus didn’t care much for the cold, but he loved that shade of blue.  “Didn’t get much snow on Mindoir,” she said.  “Not our part of it, anyway.  Maybe a little mid-winter dusting, but nothing you could really do anything with.”

Garrus blinked.  It was a rare thing for Shepard to talk about Mindoir.  He knew more than most about her family, he supposed, but it still wasn’t a topic of typical conversation.  Not that he minded, of course.  “Farming colony, though, so…”

“Rain?  Kind of important,” Shepard supplied with a nod.

“Seems to me you would’ve got your fill of rain on Despoina.”

She tipped her head back and laughed, and Garrus found himself curling closer to the warm, rich sound.  “Oh,” she said, nudging him in the ribs with the point of one bony elbow, “we’re actually calling it ‘Despoina’ now and not—what was it?  _A watery hell of gun-jamming, scope-smearing salt-water_ —isn’t that what you called it?”

“Yeah, well. It’s not my favorite place in the galaxy.”  For more reasons than just the gun-jamming, scope-smearing salt water.

“Anyway, no,” Shepard corrected him, settling comfortably against him, her position shifting to answer his.  “That wasn’t rain.  That was some unholy offspring of sleet and banshee screams.  No, I mean… when I say _rain,_ I mean that slow way clouds gather in the sky, coming together and going all dark and thick until the sky’s like lead and you can’t see the sun and the wind goes all cool,” and as she spoke, Garrus could see it—maybe not quite the way she was explaining it, but close enough, the way the clouds gathered over his mother’s garden in Palaven; he didn’t think about how the garden probably wasn’t anything more than dead, blackened fruit trees and rubble now, and he didn’t quite acknowledge the tiny sliver of relief that she never had to see her hard work and passion turned to a ruin.  But the rain, the rain he can almost see in his memory.

“And those first drops hitting the ground,” he murmurs, nuzzling the top of her head, the dark strands gently tickling his face.

“Mmm, the smell.  _That_ smell.  Best smell in the world, if you ask me.”

“Yeah?”

Vid forgotten—and that was clearly for the best—Shepard turned further into him, sighing a little as she tucked her head further beneath his chin, arms winding loosely around him.  “Yeah,” she said.  “It’s… like everything’s a little cleaner for the rain.  Even after just a few drops, all of the dust and the grit starts to wash away.”

He suddenly remembered his mother standing by one of the windows overlooking her garden, smiling to herself—a quiet, secret smile he perhaps understood a little better now than when he’d been a kid, whining about having to stay indoors while rain came down in a steady rhythm upon the roof.

“It’s not really like being given a do-over,” she said, reaching out for the remote control panel and turning off the vidscreen.  Garrus knew as well as Shepard did that the galaxy did not give out do-overs.  “But it’s… like—not a promise, really, but… reassurance things’ll be better once the rain’s passed.”

He breathed a soft chuckle as Shepard deftly maneuvered herself more completely into his lap.  “Sounds like you might’ve just wandered into metaphor territory there, Shepard.”

“Perish the thought, Vakarian.”

#

The skies are dark in London, thickly, oppressively dark.  Could be cloud cover, but Garrus thinks it’s far more likely that smoke and soot have blotted out the moon and stars.  At least, he thinks so before a single, cool raindrop splashes against his crest.  

He can still taste her kiss.  Doesn’t want to think about it being the last one—it’s a possibility, _always_ a possibility, but not one he cares to devote too much thought to right now.  Too many things, all of them too damned important right now.

Another raindrop falls.  It’s followed by another.  And another.  And another.

The scent that rises from the burnt and ruined ground doesn’t quite match his sense-memories of Palaven and his mother’s garden, but he does, on some inexplicable level, recognize the smell all the same.  Shepard’s rallying the troops as the slow, steady drizzle begins—she’s by Wrex’s side now, the two of them standing on a tower of rubble looking down at a ruin of a world through a hole that had once been a wall.  

He breathes in again, thinking of a garden in Palaven he’ll likely never see again, of a farm on Mindoir he’s never seen.  The rain is cold against his plates, nothing like the gentle tropical rains Palaven sees, but under the rot and stench of war, or Reapers and the devastation they leave in their wake, there is something else, something almost-but-not quite familiar, something—

He remembers a soft couch, a warm fire, and a terrible vid.  He remembers Shepard curling against him.  The way her hair tickled his chin.  Her words linger in his mind like the taste of her kiss against his mouth:

_But it’s… like—not a promise, really, but… reassurance things’ll be better once the rain’s passed._

Garrus draws in another deep breath—and there it is.  Not quite the same, but close enough that he can recognize it anyway.

_Let’s hope you’re right, Shepard._


	3. Prompt-fic: Brontide

_Brontide: The low rumbling of distant thunder_

All it takes is one look at the sky and he knows where to find her.

Oh, the clouds are far enough off that the storm’s going to take its time getting there, but there’s a rumble in the sky, one Garrus can hear even through the skycar’s insulation.  He settles the vehicle on its landing pad and takes long, unhurried strides through the sand, his weight sinking into it with every step.  Stairs he takes two at a time, but his pace is not rushed.  In fact, there’s time enough to stop in the kitchen, pulling a bottle from the refrigeration unit they’d had installed specifically for “the good stuff,” two glasses from the cabinet, and even remembering to snag the bottle opener where it’s been left out on the kitchen counter, dropping it deftly into his pocket.

The sky’s still mostly clear by the time he makes it up to the roof.  Shepard looks over her shoulder, tossing him one of her crooked grins as she pats the empty spot next to her on the blanket she’s sitting cross-legged on.

“You made it.  No histrionics, I hope?”

“Not a one.” He drops down next to her and she takes the glasses wordlessly while he pulls the bottle opener from his pocket.  “You know Sol doesn’t put up with that crap.  And they all had a great time last visit.”  The bottle opens with a twist and a dull pop and Shepard holds the glasses while he pours the wine.  She never completely recovered the  dexterity she had in her dominant hand, but it’s not something they need to talk about; Garrus knows why she lets him open the bottles, and it’s nothing at all to do with a night long ago with a bottle he could scarcely afford and probably the most poorly-conceived music-choice in the history of miraculously unbotched first-times.

Far out over the ocean, thunder rumbles in the distance, a soft grumble of sound.  Beside him, Shepard’s expression softens into thoughtful contentment.  She’s always loved watching the storms roll in.  The day they’d moved in, a squall had snuck up on them, dousing the beach with sheets upon sheets of rain.  There’d been Shepard, standing out on their bedroom balcony, head tipped back, drinking in every drop until her hair hung in damp clumps, until her t-shirt clung wetly to her skin, until rivulets of water had trailed down her legs to bare feet, until Garrus had pulled her inside and practically licked every droplet of water from her skin.

Good times.

The low rumble of a coming storm is usually a warning, either metaphorically or literally, and it doesn’t surprise Garrus that Shepard not only enjoys the thunder and revels in the storm that comes with it, she welcomes it.  She _waits_ for it.  For as long as he’s known her, when the storm finally arrives, she’s been the one to meet it head on.  

Hell, more than once, she’s been the one to tame it.

The clouds are darkening now, coming closer even as they grow thick and heavy. The wind’s gone cooler as it carries the tang of salt air.  They drink their wine in companionable silence.  There will be time for talk, later.  After.  They neither of them ruin the moments before a storm with talking.

The bottle’s nearly empty by the time they see the wall of water coming towards them.  A slow-mover, then.  It’s something he’s never grown tired of seeing—a storm forming, coming _towards_ them, all noise and rain and wind twisting and twining and gathering together, momentum building and building and building before it hits them.  The thunder that started out such a low, distant growl is all around them now with a rumble he feels down to his bones; the wind blows a mist fine enough to tickle before the wall of rainwater crashes upon the beach, and them.

And then, with arms spread wide and head tilted back, Shepard stands up to meet the oncoming storm.

Even amid thunder, wind, and rain, she is still—and will always be—as bright, as bold, and as fearless as any lightning strike.


	4. Prompt-fic: Gymnophoria

_Gymnophoria: The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you._

 

He can’t quite put his finger on it, but Garrus isn’t sure he entirely _trusts_ those eye-implants Shepard’s wearing.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Liara or her tech, and it’s not that he thinks the implants are harming Shepard in any way, but at least five times now, while they’ve been meant to be mingling, he’s looked over and caught her looking at him.

No, no, “looking” is too innocuous a term for what Shepard’s doing.  And maybe it’s just his imagination.  Maybe it’s just the way the implants change her eye color from blue to glittering amber, from something soothing to something predatory.  

He just thought of his girlfriend as “predatory.”  Maybe he needs a drink; maybe he _definitely_ needs a drink.

But as Garrus drifts away from Elspeth Murrain, very tactfully—if he does say so himself, and he _does_ —keeping his very many opinions about the usefulness of Citadel politics—and politicians—to himself, he glances over at Shepard again to find her watching him again.  Intently.  With just a hint of a smile playing and tilting about her lips.  She’s doing the thing she does with her eyebrow again.

And then, not just slowly, but _leisurely_ , those glittering yellow eyes travel from his crest to his toes and back up again.  It makes perfect sense that the Shadow Broker would have just the thing to see alarm system wiring and cables through floors and walls, but it also occurs to Garrus just then that it would have been an entirely fair question to ask what the hell else they can see through, because he’s really starting to wonder. Shepard’s pulse is kicking up a little higher, and her body temperature’s doing the same.  Granted, no one would know it from looking at her.  She’s just leaning against that bar, making inane small talk with the bartender.  

And watching him.  Intently _.  Predatorily._

It’s those damned yellow eyes of hers and the way they’re glittering, he’s sure of it.

Shepard’s also, as it happens, doing a few things to _his_ pulse and body temperature, and he doesn’t need tech to know that.  There’s a prickling under his plates that stretching his neck and rolling his shoulders does exactly nothing to alleviate—a sensation he wishes was a little more unpleasant than it is—and right about now all he wants is for Brooks to figure out what the hell it is she’s supposed to be doing and _do it_ because there’s only so long he can take feeling like Shepard’s looking directly into the heart of him.

All right.  Maybe not exactly his _heart._

The casino’s too warm by half now, and Brooks absolutely needs to wrap this up, because as he drifts from one cluster of agonizingly dull, self-important, overprivileged socialites to another, Shepard’s gaze is on him like fingers gliding along his carapace, like teasing scratches just beneath his crest, and this suit of his is too heavy, too warm, too _constricting._  

Then Shepard’s pushing away from the bar, yellow eyes on him, only on him, and he’d scoffed at himself for using the word “predator” in relation to her earlier, but the way she’s watching him, the way she’s walking—no, not walking, that is not _walking_ that Shepard’s doing; if anything, it’s _stalking,_ all legs and hips and it serves to remind him just how much he really loves her legs—he’s starting to think it might be wise to revisit his opinions on whether or not his girlfriend’s got a predatory streak.  And potentially a tiny sadistic one.

“So,” she says, sidling up beside him, dragging her gaze from toes to crest one more time.  “I hear you’ve got a human girlfriend.”

“Uh.  Y-yeah.  Yeah.”  He blinks rapidly, mind scrambling; he’d told her he was going to distract the securi— 

“On the outs with her, huh?” she asks, circling him slowly, glittering eyes appraising him.

“Something like that,” he manages, warily.

“Sounds like it could be my lucky day,” she murmurs from behind him, just low enough for him to hear.  Shepard’s voice is every bit as effective as her gaze—he can practically feel it like her fingers, like her lips, like—

Static blares suddenly in his ear, and he startles—Shepard does too, and Garrus cannot quite quell the sudden rush of vindication at the way her facade cracks—and Brooks’ voice crackles across the comm, yanking them both away from this… game, hunt, _whatever_ it is, and back to the mission.  

Shepard gives him one last look, lips curving into a secretive (maybe not that secretive) smile; an almost imperceptible shift follows—she stands up a little taller, holds her shoulders a little straighter, and as she takes the first few steps away from him Garrus sees her stride is purposeful instead of playful.

It is sheer inspiration and nothing else that sends his hand out, snatching her wrist and tugging her back to him.  She turns back to him so sharply that her hair moves with her, several dark strands catching at the corner of her mouth.  

“Garrus, what are you—”

He brushes them away with the tip of one finger.  Glittering eyes blink once.  Twice.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, lowering his voice and dipping his head towards her ear.  “I’m on the outs with my girlfriend.  What do you say we meet up later for a drink and… talk about it?”

There’s work to be done right now, and they both know it, but Shepard’s smile is a slow one, full of promise.  And, for a moment, that glint is back in her yellow eyes.  “It’s a date.”


	5. Prompt-fic: Strikhedonia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt for this fic specifically requested Tyrrana, an original character from "Tales Plainly Told," Thena Shepard's alphabet fic. And I am nothing if not obliging. :)

Strikhedonia: The pleasure of being able to say, “to hell with it.”

 

It really was time, Tyrrana decided, for her to quit dicking around.

This wasn’t like her, not in the least—it wasn’t like her to take off without a plan; hell, no matter the colors on her face, her blood was still Vakarian and Vakarians made plans and followed them through.  And when a plan went sideways, well… that’s why you had backup plans and contingencies in place.  What you did not do, what you absolutely _did not_ do was haunt crappy bars that made crappier drinks, sitting in a booth with your back to the wall and an eye on all possible exits, and _mope._

But then what sort of _backup plan_ was anyone supposed to have for abandoning their career path?  What contingency was there for turning your back on the hope of ever ascending any tier, ever again?  And there was no going back, not now, not after cutting her ties so conclusively.  She didn’t regret her decision; in the depth of her gut Tyrrana knew it was the right call.  And yet here she was, hardly any better than being barefaced, nowhere to go but down.

Tyrrana’s stomach lurched with imagined vertigo as she thought about tiers, and for one blinding second she _hated_ the whole damned system.

She couldn’t go back to Blackwatch.  Couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ —same difference, really.  And even if she did, they wouldn’t take her back.  Special ops tended to frown on agents who dithered.

She’d never thought of herself as a ditherer, either.  But here she was.  Dithering.

Couldn’t go back home.  No welcoming family bosom for this disappointment.  Tarus Vakarian did not tolerate failure from his children, and if Narius had ever— _ever_ entertained the idea that Tyrrana had been the favored child, that she’d been given special privileges, different opportunities than him, well.  Hopefully the words _Walk out that door and you are barefaced to me_ , sufficiently quashed little brother’s illusions.

Oh, she tried to pretend the words hadn’t stung.  She’d held her head high as she walked out, letting the door slam just a little louder than she might’ve done without Father’s particular brand of goading.

And here she was, more than a month later, and nothing to show for it but dwindling funds and an intimate knowledge of Palaven’s seediest bars.  That was the problem with taking a stand, with making a statement, with acting according to your stupid _principles._   Sometimes you found yourself up to your crest with principles and the moral high road and the rest of it—but it was a lonely place to be.  It, quite frankly, sucked.

Pushing herself up from the booth, Tyrrana sauntered over to the bar, intent on using some of those dwindling funds to buy herself a drink—she preferred brandy, but that was an expenditure she was probably better off not indulging in—that was hopefully not too terribly watered down.

But as she reached into her pocket to withdraw a credit chit, Tyrrana found something else: a cocktail napkin from yet another seedy bar on the other side of town.  On the back of that napkin was scrawled a name— _Jevia_ —and an extranet address on the Citadel.

Jevia Detarus.  Hell of an engineer with a knack for building anything out of nothing at all that probably rivaled that of a quarian.  A little short-tempered, but then so was Tyrrana.  Didn’t like anyone touching her stuff or, spirits forfend, _moving_ it.

Well.  Jev’d probably get used to that, one way or another.

She shoved the cocktail napkin and credit chit back in her pocket without bothering to order her drink.  Tyrrana didn’t fit on Palaven anymore—that much was painfully obvious.  Why not figure out where she did fit?

It really was time for her to stop dicking around, after all.  And there was no time like the present.


End file.
